In the prior art, various methods and apparatus have been proposed to inspect a continuous stream of moving articles and divert unacceptable articles from the moving stream. U.S. Pat. No. 3,283,896 to Jirik et al. discloses a coffee bean sorting apparatus which uses lamps to inspect a continuous stream of coffee beans to sort undesirable coffee beans and debris from desirable coffee beans. A deflector arm directs the coffee beans into the appropriate bin based upon the inspection system.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,168,005 and 4,324,336 to Sandbank disclose a separating apparatus which utilizes a conveyor belt, inspection system and diverter valve to separate a continuous stream of traveling articles such as crops, clods of earth or the like.
Apparatus have also been proposed for sorting tablets or capsules. U.S. Pat. No. 5,238,124 to Cane et al. discloses an apparatus utilizing rotating combs to separate a continuous stream of traveling capsules based upon the capsule configuration.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,113 to Mayer et al. discloses a high-speed tablet sorting machine which utilizes capacitive measurement to determine tablet weight. Depending on the sensed capacitive measurement, the tablets are diverted into one of two paths to an appropriate collection bin.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,741 to Jones discloses a fluidized bed bottle filling system. In this system, tablets are transferred from bulk into small containers such as bottles. Typically, the filling system includes a moving bin made of a series of grooved slats which pass beneath a quantity of fluidized tablets. The grooves are further subdivided into cavities and one tablet is permitted to drop into each cavity until all of the cavities are filled. After the filled slats move from beneath the tablet bin, the tablets are ejected, collated and fed into each bottle via transport through a manifold system.
Although prior art systems have been proposed to automatically fill tablet containers, many containers are still manually filled at the pharmacy level based upon a given prescription. While this method of filling may provide an accurate and high quality prescription drug filled container, it is tedious, time consuming and expensive.
Automatic systems such as the fluidized bed bottle filling system of Jones provide advantages in the time taken to fill a given container but are deficient in the ability to provide a filled container that consistently contains the correct number and type of tablets for use by a consumer.
In view of these deficiencies, a need has developed to provide an automatic system which continuously fills tablet containers and is capable of feeding, inspecting and diverting tablets based upon a predetermined set of parameters to provide a tablet container having the proper number and type of tablets therein.
In response to this need, the present invention provides a system and method for automatically feeding, inspecting and diverting tablets for continuous filling of tablet containers. In this manner, a prescription can be automatically filled using the inventive system and method and mailed or given to a user without the need for a pharmacist.